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Noblesse Oblige says:
Rest easy: This is mostly for show to demonstrate that the gov takes the leaks seriously. But in reality they do not really want to apprehend the culprit(s) because they would need to charge them with some crime or other. This would likely produce a ‘trial of the century’ in which the defendant would be branded as the worst criminal since (fill in the blank), while being hailed as hero by skeptics aroudn the world. Famous lawyers would rush to be chosen to defend the case. And here is the rub: The media would be forced to cover the case, and this is the last thing the gov wants.
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davidmhoffer says:
Seems like a “show” to me. They are under pressure to investigate, and so their doing something to show their bosses that….they’re doing something.
There’s a couple of possibilities I suppose. They could suspect that Tallbloke is liberator of the CG2 emails, and they want to see if there is any evidence to that effect on his computers. Of course, anyone bright enough to liberate that many emails over that period of time and get them onto multiple blogs from a server in Russia that can’t be traced any further backward to the source, ought to be bright enough to not leave the evidence in their home laptop.
I don’t know what the law is in the UK regarding this, but I for one would have refused to allow access to my computers until I had taken a complete image of all drives and copied them to backup media under the supervision of a legal representative who would then sequester the backup copy for future reference. If the investigation turns up something “incriminating”, I’d then have the backup copy in my lawyer’s vault to refer to and ensure nothing had been changed on my computer after it left my possession.
Three years ago I would have poo poo’d the need to do something like that in regard to an investigation by a 1st world police force. Now, I’m not so certain.